Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes

Merry Christmas Razzball Nation! I hope everyone is looking forward to a great holiday. What have you asked for for Christmas? A ridiculous stroke of luck to get you a Fantasy Football championship tonight? A Christmas Day where three of your guys have triple doubles? Mine is hoping that no more injuries roll through the NBA, at least with questionable return dates. Hey, at least Brook Lopez has a certain return date. October 2014. Huge loss (I was going to say break, but um, yea) for fantasy owners with a broken foot. Here’s what I said in my ranks with him at 50, lower than most other places: “Love his game, had him top-20 in May. Foot injury and big trade limits #s.” That’s me quoting me! Ok, ok, so I get a ton wrong and you can’t project injuries (which I didn’t really, gotta love vagueness!), but I avoided Lopez everywhere so I am not suffering a stocking full of coal like BroLo owners. BroLo’s stocking is actually full of a swollen foot, but you get the idea. Andray Blatche becomes a must-own with the boost in minutes, and was already at double-digits and 19:40 plus of playing time in 15 of 17 games before Friday night’s dud when BroLo got hurt. I see him grabbing 7 to 8 boards with decent %s – along with his scoring – for a bottom end guy on rosters with a tad of upside. Here’s what else/who else got hurt over the weekend:

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Man! I was loving that game! Through three contests (the inaugural one in the comments then when adopted into the piece), I didn’t get a single win! For shame… At least now with Kobe Bryant missing 6 weeks, we’ll be brimming with excitement to relaunch the game! I never ended up with Kobe anywhere, so I’m downplaying the real fantasy impact here… Kobe owners are asking should I hold or should I let go? I think he is probably a hold in almost all leagues if you can, but man, these top-end injuries are killin’ out there! Plus we have to remember it’s a fractured knee and a re-sewn up Achilles. And he wasn’t setting the world on fire anyway. Kobe is turning into Jeter from last year! Bryant is a medical marvel though, he can jump over cars going 40 MPH and come back after bone spurs a game later. So he’s worth the stash unless it’s a very shallow 10-teamer or smaller, or you’re just a triage of injuries. Here’s what else went down last night across fantasy hoops:

Yea yea I know… Of all the “Knight” puns, that’s the best ya got?! Man did Brandon Knight have a huge game last night, notching a career-high 36 points for a 36/9/3/0/1 line shooting 13-25 and 6-12 from deep. As you all know, I was a huge Knight fan heading into the year, stuck with him, and think this is what he averages here on out. Wiggity what?! Haha, just kidding to see if you were paying attention. I’ve always liked his ability to board, he’s probably the best pure scorer on that team, and can shoot treys and drive. But I’m a little tired of the “but he doesn’t assist!” from the hate Mafia. Who gives a flip man?! Of course because he’s a PG, he gets dogged for bad Ast:TO, and listen I get it – 8 TOs last night bums hard – but if Ryan Anderson had that line last night, people would be sacrificing live chickens just to meet him. Pedro Cerrano doesn’t like when his PG doesn’t dish! “If Brandon Knight doesn’t average 8 dimes a game, I say forget you Jobu! I do it myself!” Knight will never be an elite fantasy PG, sure, but a very useful one, definitely. He just has to navigate Larry Drew’s mood swings. Get the coach some Midol! Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy hoops:

Ahhhh weed jokes. The Pacific Northwest. Their team is the Blazers. Rasheed Wallace used to play for them! But I don’t think Oregon has legalized it yet. What’s the world like in Colorado and Washington these days? Something like Amsterdam? Although, even though I went there, I hardly remember it. If you have Damian Lillard though, you’re surely remembering the night he put up last night! 11-23 shooting, 8-12 3PTM for 36 points, a surprising 8 boards, and a dimebag right on the nose with 10 assists. Plus a game-winner! The near triple-double moves Lillard to 10th overall in Total Value according to Basketball Monster, and a true American Hero! And by that, I mean my 19 overall rank of him got flack more than a few times through the rankings iterations, and looking peachy keen now. He’s lowered his TOs almost a full turnover a game since his rookie year, upped the 3PT% and my favorite – is becoming an elite FT% guy going 5.2-5.6 a night at 91.8% for the season. Getting to the line and making em, pretty much the antithesis of Andre Drummond! Hey o! Oh wait, I mean, I’m jinxing Drummond, he’s the bast center in the world and will all the sudden shoot 95% from the stripe once he adopts the Barry granny shot… Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy hoops:

As my good friends at Mr. Show previously theorized, 24 was thought to be the highest number. “What about 30?!” And then NBA scorers were pulling exactly what happens in that skit. “What about 31?” “What about 32?” “I gotta ask, what about 33!” Then Gilbert Arenas was like, “if people keep scoring like this, I’m gonna have to shoot em with Crittenton’s .45!” It wasn’t necessarily that many guys going off, just a few you wouldn’t have guessed. I’m trying to pick the most off the rails 30+ point night, so I think I’ll go with Alec Burks, who just looked awful in the two games before last night. 7-25 his past two outings, but goes 12-17 last night for career-highs in both points with 31 and dimes at 7. Added three boards and four steals with two treys for good measure. Burks has always looked like a good athlete out there, but never like a guy who could take over like that. I think a good debate is Burks or Terrence Ross. I’ll lean Ross, but very close, I just think Burks is too inconsistent. Here’s what else went down last night in hoops:

Pretty much anyone involved in the big Rudy Gay trade has gotten nothing but positive return except Greivis Vasquez. Poor Vasquez… And easily the biggest winner right now is Isaiah Thomas just going off with the backcourt to himself, going 29/6/2 on Friday night and 19/2/8 last night. With both PGs there in Shaq-ramento to start the year, it was like the first Terminator, then IT2 got flipped into the main good guy and it’s movie magic in the sequel. Coach Mike Malone even came out and said Thomas is gonna lead the NBA in minutes. Iron man! Well I guess it would be hyperalloy combat chassis covered by living human tissue man… I wish Vasquez had never gone to Sacramento, because as I mentioned last week, I aggressively ranked Thomas early in the summer. I love this kid. He’s going to be extremely tough to go out and trade for right now, and I certainly would not be selling. He’s got both Gay and DeMarcus Cousins to dish to, plus he’s a fantastic scorer. I have all sorts of IT2 regret now since he’s not on any of my teams… Womp womp… Here’s what else went down over the weekend:

Anyone stay up to watch some of the Geminid meteor shower start up last night? I love astronomy. And it’s not really that different from fantasy. You use math and all sorts of techy stats like Win Shares or True Shooting Percentage or Gravitational Microlensing to find far off worlds and far off fantasy production. Then if you’re lucky enough, like having the reigns at the greatest fantasy hub known to man, you get to name your own planets! Of course astronomers find so many exoplanets these days that H2894B is the best they got for creative nomenclature. I got Goromotaros! Rainbow Lines! And LaMarcus Aldridge fit the bill of them all, with a redonkulous 31/25/2/2/2 slash last night. He shot 12-22 and is playing like a MVP. I ranked him too low. I ranked him like a worthless Neptune when he is really a Jupiter. According to Basketball Monster, he’s your #7 overall player. And his only real negative is he doesn’t shoot threes – which is what ThrAGNOFs are for! I also thought the Blazers weren’t going to be a gas giant out there. Maybe a little white dwarf. But they’re going off and my ridiculous conception that LA could be traded if this year didn’t work looks horrible now. I’ll admit stupidity there, but the Blazers are virtually the same team. And now it’s clicking. There’s planetary alignment. So when you’re done watching basketball, bundle up, grab some adult beverages and head out to watch the shooting stars late tonight. It helps ease the worldly constraints of stress and fantasy disappointments – at least it does for me – and helps you just think bigger… Here’s what else I saw last night:

I hate you Larry Drew. First you go and make your son Larry Drew II feel like he’s some sort of special talent and have him quit UNC, then you take over a Bucks team that all want to leave too. Why do I have so much invested in the Bucks?! I hate the Bucks! In a game where the Spurs doubled Milwaukee’s points in the first quarter (32 to 16), then went up by 23 at halftime, then after 3 were up 38, Drew decided to kill fantasy teams by playing their F-team virtually the whole second half. As in, a D-League team could beat those guys. Brandon Knight got 18 minutes after an impressive game two nights ago. John Henson got 21 after the huge breakout. O.J. Mayo, yes that terrible, horrible, not gelling on this awful team O.J. Mayo led the starters with 22 minutes on a 3/0/0/0/0 line with a TO. Ok, ok, so Drew let his scrubs play in the blowout, good to see Giannis Antetokounmpo get some development time at just over 33 minutes, but the icing on the cake was Drew gave Ersan Ilyasova, a guy that looks like a humanoid Turkey, 39 minutes?! How is that developing young talent?! Ersan goes out and shoots 3-16 for an 8/6/2 game. The Bucks are the worst. You’re holding Henson obviously and Knight I think you stick with, but I don’t want any of these other guys on a 12-teamer. I know I like Khris Middleton, but he was part of the starting mess and I just dropped Mayo in some sort of RCL travesty I should probably take my name off of. I still think Knight, Mayo, Middleton and Henson are locked in as starters for now, but man, I really hope they look good facing the even worse Bulls again on Friday. Enough ranting from me! Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy hoops:

In what was some brutally bad basketball last night, John Henson led the woeful Milwaukee Bucks into Chicago against a Bulls team more battered up than a candy bar at a state fair… and the Bucks actually won! It’s horrifying to think in today’s NBA that a guy like Henson might have been the most polished offensive player on the court for EITHER TEAM. It was brutal. This was the game I made the Yahoo highlights for, and man, it was more of a wreck than if you went out partying and decided that Lindsay Lohan would be your DD. But for fantasy, whew-ee if you’re a Henson owner! Huge rainbow line of 25/14/2/3/6. It was so good from the big man that Larry Sanders punched a wall. But the icing on the cake, was this preposterous rainbow shot to close out the rainbow night. I love the Bulls announcers reacting to that. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Good thing he didn’t take that shot in Cowboys Stadium, that mighta hit the scoreboard! It feels really good seeing Henson going off, as he was a guy I ranked really high (#100 exactly) and have recommended him over a lot of fringe-wire adds through the young season. His stats are helping fill all the Andre Drummond voids I have! Win some, lose some… Henson is obviously a must-own in all leagues, and I think can maintain solid production playing at the 4 when The Colonel is back. Here’s what else I saw last night in hoopsland:

If you recall back to last week, I remember talking up Jon Leuer as an interesting deep league play. Loved the out-of-position threes, the boarding, the all-around production. I said I would probably go after him in REL, and then Slim tells me he’s probably not bidding on him this week. So I figure, I can dangle a few bucks and if someone beats me to him so be it. But it shouldn’t have been you Slim!! He Leuered me in with scoffing and brush-off ness. Slim, you want to repay me for this horrific slight of hand? Trade him to me! I guess I should talk more about Leuer than rant… Just over 27 minutes last night for 16/12 with a three on 7-14 shooting. This now marks five straight games of 23:30+ minutes, averaging nearly a double-double a game on top of almost a three a game with a few blocks. He’s not going to turn into some superstar, but he’s a great stretch the court center, which fits Mike Conley trying to drive and dish. Sorry Kosta Koufos, but your outside shots are labradoodles! That term needs to be added to the glossary… I see Leuer continuing his PT as a double double threat while Marc Gasol is out, with a handful of threes, steals and blocks to help out deeper leagues. Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy hoops: